The typical design for winged or tabbed sanitary napkins includes a central absorbent body, and two tabs for wrapping around the edges of the undergarment and holding the product in place. A problem with the early designs for sanitary napkins with tabs was that when the tabs were pulled into place, there was no effective barrier to protect against leakage along the side of the napkin. The pulling of the tabs can also result in the central absorbent body surface sloping away from the user in the region adjacent to the tabs, thus making side leakage more likely to occur in this area.